Twitter can build your brand, but make sure you don’t spam the web

If you haven’t begun tweeting professionally yet, you are already far behind your competition. As a business owner, you are tasked with managing your company to new professional heights, but you also need to keep your thumb on the pulse of innovation. Twitter has already been around for several years, but with each new month, it becomes easier to use the social media service in branding your business.

Of course, there are numerous ways you can actually harm your professional reputation online, and many of today’s businesses can attest to that experience firsthand. Therefore, when crafting your business’ voice and presence on Twitter, make sure you have a clearly defined strategy on how you propose to publish content and engage with followers, without becoming a spammy account.

What exactly defines spam, you may ask? This is often a tricky aspect of social media marketing, as different audiences react to various amounts of content than others. To discover how receptive your buyers are, you need to test the waters. A good benchmark to set and start with is a 3:1 ratio. For every three tweets you make about industry trends, interesting links, creative thoughts and engagements with followers, you can make a post that pertains to your business directly. While you might not want to be aggressive and tell your followers to buy in a short amount of characters, you can use this space to highlight a deal, discount or new opportunity that you are offering your clientele.

When you have tested the waters and discovered the amount of content you can post in a day without scaring your followers away, you can dedicate more of your time to finding your voice on social media. Often times, through this trial and error process, professionals find that in order to maintain a superior online presence, there is value in creating additional Twitter handles, and filtering followers to various accounts based on their inquiries, interests and needs.

What are some Twitter tips that have helped you become an engaging business in your field?

Martin Jones is a Senior Marketing Manager with the corporate Cox Communications social media team where he assists in leading strategy, campaign ideation and marketing execution for Cox Business social media & content marketing. Today, over 1 million fans engage with Cox Communications content, campaigns and Customer Care on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube. LinkedIn and Google+.